LIVING HELL

Age Range: 11 - 13

Pub Date: April 1st, 2010ISBN: 978-0-15-206193-7Publisher: Harcourt

Gleeful Alien-esque action adventure. Cheney has spent every one of his 17 years on a spaceship (33 years if you count the time in suspended animation). One day, he knows, Plexus will land on a planet, but space is home. His life is birthday parties, dinner with his parents and work rotations until the fateful day where they hit a mysterious wave in space. It’s a subatomic radiation wave, or the universal life force or... really, the details don’t matter. The point is, suddenly the ship turns alive. What used to be floating laundry units, transport shuttles and scientific equipment are now enormous oozing cells and acidic carnivores, and every last piece wants to kill the humans. The race-against-time adventure is chock-full of scientific revelations, gruesome corpses and a marvelously gratuitous samurai sword. Even the requisite escape through the air ducts is made more exciting when the living ship has an asthma attack. Packed with thrills, this deserves equally over-the-top CGI. In a word—AWESOME. (Science fiction. 11-13)